


Disinfection

by SilenceIsGolden15



Series: Voltron Oneshots [12]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Human Experimentation, Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Pidge's pronouns change throughout, Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Team as Family, The Garrison is shady, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-04
Updated: 2018-06-04
Packaged: 2019-05-18 06:04:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14847186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilenceIsGolden15/pseuds/SilenceIsGolden15
Summary: Back at the Garrison, no one knows what happened to Keith Kogane or why he was expelled. Unbeknownst to the students, the Garrison had discovered he was in possession of a strange knife they suspected didn't belong to Earth. Horror ensues.





	Disinfection

**Author's Note:**

> DOUBLE UPLOAD BITCHES!!!!! This fic was inspired by the lovely Callaeidae3 and their awesome 'Under the Radar' series which you should definitely check out. Anyway this thing is 29 freakin' pages single spaced so you'd best get to reading.

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m the number one pilot at Galaxy Garrison. I’m not an it.  _

Keith shivered violently and curled his arms around his knees. The stupid paper hospital gown he was forced into provided next to no protection from the steel cage he was locked in, and he’d only just returned from another hypothermia experiment. 

He had no idea how long he’d been here. There were no windows, only burning white walls and tile floors. The blinding fluorescent lights never went out. The metal was always cold, the smell of disinfectant was always present, there was literally no way to tell how much time had passed since he’d been brought here. Since he’d been expelled from the Garrison.

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m the number one pilot at Galaxy Garrison. I’m not an it.  _

He had to say his mantra, constantly, repeating over and over in his head lest he forget. No one used his name anymore, not in God knows how long. He wasn’t Keith, or Kogane, not even Cadet-- they called him Subject Eleven. Like a caged animal. An  _ experiment. _

They didn’t even use pronouns. They just called him ‘it’ all the time, like he was just another vial or tray of bacteria. He had to say it, remind himself, or he’d forget. 

He’d already forgotten so much. It had only been a few days after he’d been grabbed (snatched right off the road leaving the Garrison, like they’d know he’d be there) that he’d started the tradition. They-- those sick scientists in their pristine white coats-- had strapped him down on a table despite all of the fight he put up and shot him up with something. Some kind of drug that made his head spin and his vision blur. And then they just sat and watched and recorded to see what happened.

It had made him tired, but he’d fought the exhaustion, terrified that if he fell asleep he wouldn’t wake up again. So in his head he’d started reciting every fact he could remember about himself or his brother. 

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m the number one pilot at the Galaxy Garrison. Shiro was the pilot of the Kerberos Mission. Shiro crashed and died. My favorite color is red. Shiro’s is white. Shiro’s father died in a war twenty years ago and his mother raised him solo. My father left when I was five and Shiro’s mother adopted me when I was fourteen. She died two years ago. I’m eighteen years old. Shiro was twenty five. I was expelled from the Garrison for accusing Iverson of lying about the Kerberos Mission. Shiro’s favorite band is Shinedown but he secretly loves Lady GaGa. We argued about if Petyr Baelish deserved to die. Shiro likes his bacon chewy but I like mine crunchy.  _

On and on and on he went until the drug finally pulled him under. He’d do it every time he needed a distraction, every time he needed a reminder that he was a human being and not a piece of lab equipment. But over time the list had dwindled and dwindled, until he was left with this. 

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m not an it. _

* * *

Keith could clearly remember the day he gave up. It was the day of his first surgery, the first time they cut him open to see if his insides were different. He still didn’t know why they thought that. They’d interrogated him at first, something about his father’s knife and how it was different and not from Earth. Of course he couldn’t tell them anything, because he didn’t know. His father was long gone. But something had convinced them that if his knife was different, so was he.

Keith had been hoping that they’d do a few experiments, figure out he was human, and give him a chance to get out. But whatever their tests results were, it didn’t make them let him go. It only made it worse. 

That day, as they strapped him down and forced the oxygen mask over his head, he’d come to a realization that made him give up fighting entirely. For the first time in his life.

He wasn’t getting out of here.

Shiro was gone. Dead somewhere in space without even a proper burial or memorial. And the bottom line was Keith didn’t have anyone else. Shiro’s mother was dead. The Garrison expelled him. He’d never made any friends. No one would notice he’d disappeared. 

No one knew. No one cared. No one was coming for him. And when they ran out of experiments and had to discard the evidence, no one would mourn him. 

That was the day he gave up.

* * *

The experiments were awful. They tested everything they could possibly think of. How long he could survive cold temperatures before nearly dying of hypothermia, and how long it would take him to recover from it. How long he could survive hot temperatures before nearly dying of heatstroke, and how long it took to recover from it. What temperature his skin burned at. How much force did it take to cut him, bruise him, break a bone, dislocate a joint. How long could he hold his breath. How well could he see underwater. How long could he survive without oxygen. How much weight could he lift. How fast could he run and for how long. How much voltage could he take. How loud did a noise have to be before it hurt him, and at what pitch. How did his organs work and his senses. How fast could he heal.

He’d had almost all of his bones broken at least once. He’d had hypothermia and heat stroke too many times to count. He’d nearly drowned. He’d had his eardrums ruptured. He’d been suffocated, zapped with electricity, forced to run on a treadmill or lift increasing weight until he’d collapsed and refused to get up again. He had more surgery scars than he could care to count, and a few more for good measure. 

There was one thing they were obsessed with, and kept circling back to over and over and over. One day they’d put a drop, just a drop, of some sort of golden liquid on the back of his hand. He’d howled in pain, fought and struggled, but they just held him down and observed. It felt like it was melting through his skin, but when he’d looked, it had turned purple. An hour later the color was gone. 

The next thing they did was plunge his entire hand in the stuff, and he’d actually blacked out as the appendage took on a lavender hue. After that he was terrified they were gonna force his entire body into a pool of it or something, but he overheard the scientists saying that they didn’t have enough of it. So they reversed engineered it, isolating its components and trying them on Keith one by one. None of them achieved the desired outcome of making him turn purple like a Teletubby, but one of them did give him an acid burn. A really bad acid burn.

That blobby, spattered scar sat angrily on the back of his right hand, taunting him. 

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m not an it.  _

* * *

The night Katie heard about the loss of the Kerberos Mission was the night she began to suspect the Garrison was hiding something.

The night she hacked into their computers and got banned from the site was the night she knew for sure they were hiding something. 

The night Pidge and her simulation team broke Takashi Shirogane out of that med tent was the night she thought she’d found all of their secrets.

That was also the night she found out she was wrong.

They’d rushed in and pulled Shiro out barely a moment before the med tech was about to sedate him. The fight hadn’t been clean, but Hunk had Hulked out the moment Lance took a hit and it was over quickly after that. Then Pidge hotwired one of the Garrison’s Jeeps and they took off into the desert. 

Shiro, barely conscious, had told them he knew a place that his friend owned nearby, and gave them clear enough directions to get there. It was a little one room shack, covered in dust and desert sand, but it was better than nothing. They’d let Shiro go to sleep on the pull out sofa and settled themselves on the floor, Hunk busily poking his nose through the various boxes stacked throughout the room and Lance peering over Pidge’s shoulder as she continued to hack the Garrison using the pathway the video feed had given her.

“There’s a lot of weird stuff in here.” She murmured, and Lance leaned closer to peer at her screen. “Other sites. Research centers looks like, but they’re super high clearance. Look,” She clicked on a tab and pulled up a PDF, “This is a form filed with the US government to keep those sites off of maps.”

“Does it say what the centers are for?” Lance asked.

Pidge frowned to herself and took a few minutes of searching through files to find what she wanted. 

“Looks like various things. Bioweapons research. Nuclear weapons. Extraterrestrial life studies.” She bit her lip and clenched her fists in frustration. She’d been hoping to find more clues about what happened to her father and brother, not what various military bullshit the Garrison was into. 

When she glanced up, Lance was watching Shiro, a thoughtful look on his face.

“What?”

“Just… do you think the Garrison gave him that arm?”

Pidge turned to consider. Shiro’s metal arm was, honestly, fascinating. It moved just like a real hand, responded like one. She couldn’t see how it was grafted to his shoulder under the weird purple top he was wearing, but she could only imagine how advanced it would have to be to connect with the nerves like that. Too advanced for the Garrison.

“No.” She said after some thought. “You heard them on the video feed. They didn’t know what it was either.”

Lance hummed and dropped his gaze back to the screen. “Scroll down, what else do they have?”

Pidge obediently tapped the arrow key, eyes skimming over the various file titles until one in particular caught her eye. 

The sharp inhale beside her said that Lance had seen it at the same moment. 

“Human… experimentation?” His voice was wobbly, barely more than a squeak. Hunk heard it and shuffled over to them with a furrowed brow.

“What did you say, buddy?”

Pidge gulped, cursor hovering over the file in morbid curiosity. 

“It looks like--” Her voice cracked and she had to clear her throat before continuing. “It looks like the Garrison was doing experiments. In secret. On people.”

Hunk froze. He glanced up at Shiro, back at Lance, then at her. His jaw clenched. 

With trembling fingers, Pidge opened the file. 

Eleven more files were revealed, each labeled with the word ‘Subject’, followed by a number. Ten out of eleven had another word following. Terminated.

_ Subject One- Terminated _

_ Subject Two- Terminated _

_ Subject Three- Terminated _

_ Subject Four- _

“They’re dead.” Lance squeaked again. Pidge could feel him trembling beside her, even as she fell into a haze of disbelief. “They’re all dead.”

“Not all of them.” Even to her, her voice sounded distant and detached. “This last one isn’t. Subject Eleven.”

She opened that file without thinking, and then immediately regretted it. Inside was an explosion of various PDF’s, graphs and charts, and video clips. The titles gave her chills.

_ Hypothermia Experiment #1- Subject Eleven _

_ Fractured Femur X-Ray- Subject Eleven _

_ Digestive Tract Surgery Results- Subject Eleven _

_ Controlled Substance Euclid Component #113 Exposure Experiment- Subject Eleven _

Her fingers hovered over that last video, about to push the button when Hunk spoke up.

“Pidge… are you sure we wanna watch this, man?” 

When she glanced over her shoulder at him he had a hand pressed over his mouth and looked more than a little green, terror shining in his eyes. Lance was pale and still shaking, but he ground his teeth together and answered for her.

“Yes. If the Garrison is hurting someone else, we can’t just leave them there.”

All of them looked over at Shiro as he turned on his side, his cybernetic hand clenching into a fist. The scar on his face stood out sharply from his pale skin. They all gave a collective shiver, and then Pidge played the video.

The video began with a white room, the camera evidently oriented on the ceiling. It stared down at a metal table, almost like a slab one would see at a morgue, except it had restraints. Locked in those restraints was a person, a boy from the sharp angle of the jaw, staring straight up at the camera with empty eyes. His pale skin was practically translucent under the harsh lights, and black hair spilled around his head in tangled matts. 

Pidge didn’t recognize him, but Lance and Hunk stiffened up, Hunk muffling his cry of surprise behind his hand. 

“No way.” Lance muttered, staring with wide eyes at the screen. “Keith?”

“You know him?” Pidge asked, barely registering that she’d spoken at all. 

“Not… not really.” Lance’s bottom lip trembled as they stared at the video, waiting for something to happen besides the boy looking up at them. “He was the best pilot in the Garrison, but he got expelled a week after we heard about Kerberos. He’s--” He suddenly choked, and Hunk put his other hand on his back in a show of support. “He’s the reason I got into fighter class at all.”

The sound of a door opening echoed from the speakers and all of them snapped back to attention. Someone had just walked in, a scientist from the look of their white coat. All they could see from their birds eye view was blonde hair. 

Keith didn’t move, barely flinching when the scientist set down a vial on the table next to him with a soft clink. He just keep staring, barely blinking, and that look had insects crawling all over Pidge’s skin. She felt like he was staring into her soul.

The scientist fiddled with something on the table for a moment before turning back to Keith. All three of them leaned in to see that she was holding a dropper with some sort of sickly green liquid inside. Carefully, the scientist reached out for Keith’s bound hand. 

She must have dropped whatever was in the dropper onto Keith’s skin, because he let out a pained hiss and closed his eyes. 

_ Thank God.  _ Pidge thought before promptly feeling guilty for it. 

Keith bit viciously into his lip, but he couldn’t stop little pained whimpers from escaping him, growing in volume the longer the drop stayed on his hand. The scientist just stood back and watched, making notes on a clipboard. 

“It’s burning him.” Hunk whispered. 

Several more seconds passed of this before Keith let out his first cry. Pidge’s shoulders jumped to her ears, eyes blurring with hot tears for a long moment before blinking them away. Keith yelled again and twisted on the bed a little, but clearly couldn’t escape the metal clamps holding him down. 

“When did this happen?” Lance asked. Pidge checked the time stamp (anything to stop looking at Keith’s face all twisted up with pain) and bit the inside of her lip.

“Three months ago.”

The third noise Keith made was less of a yell and much more of a scream, but before any of them could react to it themselves they were all jumping out of their skin at Shiro suddenly sitting bolt upright on the couch. 

He looked worse than when he’d gone to sleep. Dead pale, eyes wide and afraid, sweat coating his skin and sticking his weird white bangs to his forehead. Grey eyes locked on Pidge’s and she shrunk back, frightened by the look there. Lost, afraid, but also… protective. 

“I know that voice.” Shiro mumbled hoarsely, just as Keith made another sound from the video Pidge hadn’t had the mind to pause. In seconds Shiro was off the sofa, rushing around to see the screen and shoving them out of the way with a force Pidge hadn’t been expecting for a guy who had just crashed in a mysterious spaceship. 

When he sees the screen his face crumples and twists into something so heartbroken and so full of rage that Pidge feels her breath catch in her chest. 

“ _ Keith? _ ”

For a long moment there’s no sound in the room besides the video, everyone else holding their breath as they wait for Shiro’s reaction. 

Pidge had no idea how Shiro knew Keith, but it was exceedingly clear that something was about to go down.

Shiro took in a deep breath and let it out slow. His cybernetic hand creaked as he clenched his fist. 

“Where is he?” He asked, voice even and dangerous. “Where is this?”

“Um.” Pidge said, trying not to choke. “I don’t know, but I can find out, I just--” She reached out and tugged the laptop closer to herself, closing out of the video as quickly as she could and diving back into the files. 

All she needed was coordinates. She could find coordinates. 

* * *

Shiro wasn’t having a good day. God, he couldn’t even remember most of what had happened. He remembered Matt and Sam, purple metal, aliens, pain. He remembered stumbling down a hallway, through a pair of sliding doors, and then he was rocketing through space. Next thing he knew he was strapped down  _ again _ , but this time by humans, before three freaking teenagers busted through and saved his sorry ass. 

And now Keith. While he’d been gone, something had happened to Keith. 

Goddamnit. 

“When did this happen?” He was demanding aloud. Pidge was busily trying to find him coordinates, so his questions fell to Lance and Hunk, who looked more than a little intimidated. He hated it, and something scratched at the back of his mind, but for now he shoved it away. He had to get answers. 

“How long has he been gone? Why didn’t anyone figure out he was missing?”

Hunk fidgeted, Lance shoved his hands in his pockets. 

“He got expelled.” Lance muttered, kicking at the floor. “A week after they told us about Kerberos being lost, Keith had some sort of a discipline issue and got kicked out. They never told us what exactly happened.”

Shiro bit his lip, feeling a soft pang. God, Keith had worked so hard to get into the Garrison, all he wanted to do was fly, and now…

He shook it off. One thing at a time. “How long ago was this?”

Lance and Hunk exchanged nervous looks, and Shiro had to bite back his commander voice. He didn’t even know these kids. All he knew was that Pidge looked a disturbing amount like Matt, and that had something  _ else _ scratching at him, but again, one thing at a time. 

“That was… about ten months ago, I think.”

Shiro’s mind blanked out. 

Ten months. Keith had been in there… for ten months. Because Shiro was gone, and he didn’t have anybody else to look out for him, and no one noticed and oh  _ god _ .

“I’ve got coordinates!” Cried Pidge, jolting Shiro out of his reverie and directly into action. As he rushed out the door he heard the footfalls of the cadets behind him, along with Pidge’s quiet grumbling. 

“Two rescue missions in one night, Jesus.”

* * *

_ God, the Garrison was not fucking around with this place.  _

Barbed wire, floodlights, armed guards-- the Garrison had spared no expense in making absolutely sure everyone knew something sketchy was probably happening in this building. And you know what? That was absolutely fine with Shiro. 

Because he could fight. He remembered fighting. He didn’t know why or who, but he knew he was good at it. He was good at it and he could do this. For Keith.

Additionally, Pidge seemed to be a tech genius ( _ Just like Matt,  _ his brain hissed traitorously) and could easily turn off the cameras and even some of the door alarms. Lance, despite his loud mouth, was surprisingly sneaky and found the best routes for them to sneak through the hallways. Best of all it was approximately 3 am, and besides the guards that Shiro took out easily there was no one in the facility. 

It didn’t look like much at first. The whole place had white walls, tile floors, and harsh lights, but so far it just looked like a bunch of offices. But as they pushed deeper and deeper into the labyrinth of the halls, the sharp smell of disinfectant began to invade their nostrils. Then they reached a stainless steel door, locked by a key card reader that Pidge hacked, and they were in. 

The building is even less pleasant in this section. Through Plexiglass windows Shiro can see labs, hospital rooms, surveillance closets, all shoved full of things that make his head spin. Whether it’s because of some trauma he can’t remember or just the sheer dread of imagining what Keith had been through, he can’t tell. 

“Here.” Pidge says quietly, stopping their group. He taps a finger against a plate on the wall that reads  _ Subject Containment.  _ Shiro, with an anxious gulp, pushes the door open. 

The room isn’t very big, maybe the size of a dorm at the Garrison. But instead of beds or anything even faintly humane, there is instead a stack of stainless steel cages stacked against the wall. Each cage is big enough to hold a Great Dane, and in the bottom leftmost cage is curled a shape splashed with dark hair. 

“Holy shit.” Lance breathes from behind him, but Shiro barely hears. He’s already moving forward, kneeling before the cage and grasping the bars with his metal hand. 

Metal clanged against metal, and Keith violently flinched back, not even lifting his head as he pressed himself against the back of the cage.

“Oh no.” Hunk whimpered.

“Jesus Christ.” That one was Pidge. Shiro blocked them all out. All he could think was  _ God, he’s so thin now. _

“Keith.” His voice cracks, and he tries again. “Keith, look at me bud. Please.”

Every muscle in Keith’s body freezes up. He doesn’t look. 

“Shiro?” He’s barely understandable, words so soft and voice so rough. When was the last time he’d spoken? Been spoken to? Called his name? “N-no, there’s no way…”

“I’m here, it’s me.” Shiro pressed his flesh hand through the bars, reaching, but Keith flinches so hard the whole cage shakes and he pulls back. 

“Am I dead?” 

“Aw  _ fucking _ \--” Lance smothers his emotional outburst behind his hand, not wanting to get them caught, while Shiro blinks back guilty tears. This was all his fault. He never should have left Keith. 

“No, you’re not dead.” He desperately wishes he could make himself sound calmer, but there’s just no way at this point.

“But…” Keith hesitates, tucks his head down against his knees. “You’re dead. So how?”

“I’m not dead either, Keith, I came back. I came back, and we’re gonna get you out of here, ok?”

To his surprise, Keith shakes his head. When he speaks again his voice is choked even more with suppressed tears.

“This is a dream. Or a-a test, or-r something.” He’s shaking now. “I-I c-can’t…”

Dammit, they didn’t have time for this. This wasn’t going to go away by talking. If Shiro was being honest to himself, he wasn’t completely sure if this was real either or if he was still wherever he had been before, being tormented by whoever the fuck was torturing him. 

So, with a great groan of creaking metal, Shiro clenches his prosthetic fingers around the bars and pulled the door of the cage clean off. 

“Shiro, what the  _ fuck _ \--”

“Dude, that was awesome!”

“That was way too loud, man!”

Shiro ignored the outbursts of the cadets and gently held his flesh hand out to Keith, who at first had tried to shove himself even harder against the back of the cage. 

“C’mon, Keith.” He murmured as quietly as he could, calling back memories of coaxing a shaking Keith out from under his bed when he was fourteen and afraid he was going to get hit for not finishing his dinner. “I just want to take you home.”

Keith white knuckled the bars of the cage. 

“What happened to you?” He choked out, not even bothering to hide the tears welling in his eyes. “What happened to you, Shiro? Why didn’t you come back?”

Jesus, the betrayal was written all over his face and Shiro can’t breathe anymore. 

“I’m sorry.” He sounds strangled. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here to protect you, Keith. But I’m here now, and I’ll never let anyone touch you again, I swear on my life.”

Keith looked at him, looked at his hand, and bites his lip. Shiro waits patiently despite the adrenaline pumping in him, screaming for him to grab Keith and run for their lives. 

Finally, Keith seems to come to a decision. 

He puts his hand in Shiro’s. 

* * *

Hunk talks to fill the silence of the shack. Normally this would be Lance’s job, but Lance is coiled into a ball in the corner with a pale face, so the job falls to him to keep everyone from completely imploding on themselves. He’s aware that he’s babbling about nothing and no one is answering, but he presses onwards regardless. 

Pidge is sitting on the floor near the door, typing away on his laptop with trembling fingers. He’d muttered something about preparing the files to be leaked to the public before throwing himself into his work and he hadn’t spoken since.

Keith and Shiro were the worst. They were both on the sofa, Shiro leaning back against the arm and Keith curled up against his chest, fisting his hands into the weird clothing Shiro wore and holding on for dear life. He looked tired, but never closed his eyes. Shiro was much the same, holding Keith so tightly he might have bruised him and running fingers through his hair, over and over and over like some sort of apology. 

Keith hadn’t spoken a word since they got him out of the cage. When they’d gotten him outside, he’d tilted his head back and stared at the stars for a solid minute before breaking down in tears. Hunk was more than shaken. This wasn’t the Keith he remembered from classes, or the Shiro he remembered from the press conferences and the halls of the Garrison. 

At some point in the night Hunk managed to scrounge up a box of energy bars from the depths of a closet, and by the grace of god they weren’t expired. He offered a bar to everyone in an attempt to keep them fed and raise the mood in the room. 

Lance gave him a watery smile and chewed on it slowly. Pidge gave him a grunt of acknowledgement, but left it untouched next to his laptop. 

Shiro looked at him warily for a moment when it was offered to him, and then snatched it up and wolfed it down like Hunk was about to take it back at any moment, which summoned up some very unwelcome thoughts about what had happened to the older pilot. 

Keith took it, but then his hand started shaking and it clattered to the floor, still in its wrapper. Hunk patiently picked it back up again, unwrapped it, put it in Keith’s hand, and then pushed his arm closer to his chest so that he wouldn’t drop it. Then he waited for Keith to start nibbling on it before returning to the box and giving the last bar to Shiro, who consumed it just as quickly as the first one.

Hunk was still murmuring about some random homework assignment when the sun started to rise above the horizon. A few minutes later, Pidge sat back and shoved his fingers under his glasses to rub his eyes. 

“I’ve got all the files organized and prepped.” He murmured, pre-dawn stillness keeping his voice low. “I’m ready to send the files to every major news site in the country.” His eyes fluttered up to Keith, who stared back blankly. “That is, if that’s what you want.”

Keith’s jaw clenched. For a moment, that old fire that Hunk recognized from the flight simulator reignited, and he nodded firmly. Pidge gave a wolfish smile and turned back to his laptop. 

Lance was finally beginning to extricate himself from his corner and approached Hunk as Shiro muttered lowly to Keith. 

“You should try to get some sleep.”

Keith shook his head, but said nothing in way of explanation. 

“I know you’re scared.” Shiro continued, dragging his left hand through Keith’s hair. “I am too.”

Keith lightly rested his hand on Shiro’s metal wrist, dragging a sigh out of him. “I’ll try to sleep if you do.”

Keith considered this for a moment, then nodded and reluctantly let his eyes close. Shiro followed suit after one last flick of his eyes over the room, lingering on the door and the other occupants. 

“We should sleep too.” Hunk said to Lance, who leaned up against his shoulder with a yawn. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right. It was a helluva day.”

But neither of them moved.

“Do you think they’re gonna come after him?” Pidge asks. He didn’t expect Shiro to be the one to answer.

“If they do,” He says into Keith’s hair, not opening his eyes. “I’ll tear them apart.”

He says it calmly, in a matter of fact manner. Two plus two equals four. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. And Shiro will murder anyone who comes near Keith again without a hint of remorse.

Hunk understands the sentiment, but feels shivers go up his spine regardless. 

* * *

Lance managed about four hours of sleep before he drifted back into consciousness. The sun had risen well above the horizon, casting warm light through the dusty windows and onto the floor, one of the squares landing firmly on Hunk’s face. Despite that, Hunk didn’t look like he would be waking up any time soon. Poor guy was exhausted.

Pushing himself up onto his hands from his position on the floor, Lance glanced around the room. Pidge was coiled up on his side, hugging his laptop to his chest like a stuffed animal and his glasses crooked on his nose. Hunk sprawled out on his back nearby, and had until just moments ago been serving as a pillow for Lance. 

Keith and Shiro were still on the couch, but neither of them looked like they were sleeping well. Keith had curled himself into the smallest ball he could manage, brow furrowed as he dreamed. Occasionally one of Shiro’s eyes would twitch, and his prosthetic clicked and whirred as his right hand closed into a fist and released. Clench. Unclench. Clench. Unclench. 

Over and over. 

Lance indulged himself in one more minute of watching the dust motes play in the sunbeams before reluctantly getting to his feet. He didn’t have time to lose-- he was in hiding now, concealing two fugitives from the Garrison (One of whom had come barreling out of the sky in a borrowed spaceship), and he needed to figure out a plan of attack. They couldn’t just stay in this little shack forever, but where else could they go?

Lance took a single step towards the front door. The wooden plank squeaked ever so quietly under his foot, so quietly he probably wouldn’t have noticed it if Shiro’s eyes hadn’t shot open at that precise moment, locking onto him and glittering like steel. 

Practically at the same time, the rest of Shiro’s body propelled itself into motion as well, catapulting him up from the couch with absolutely no regard for the other person laying on top of him. Keith hit the floor with a thump and a shocked cry, practically between Shiro’s legs as he automatically took up a fighting stance.

Lance raised his hands in surrender and scrambled back several steps, recognizing that Shiro wasn’t all there. That little bit of warmth that had lingered in his eyes was absent, replaced by cold analysis and adrenaline yanking him back somewhere they didn’t understand. 

Keith, thrown from the safety of sleep and into the real world, panicked. He recoiled from Shiro and found his way into the corner between the sofa and the wall, hunkering down into a self protecting ball and going perfectly still.

Pidge and Hunk were beginning to stir, and Shiro’s harsh gaze darted to them, sizing them up. Fuck Lance had to de-escalate this situation, now, before someone got hurt. 

“Shiro.” He said, and Shiro’s head snapped back around to zero in on him. He kept his hands up and in clear sight, palms up.  _ No danger here _ . “Shiro, it’s Lance. You’re with us, in the desert. You’re safe.”

Shiro hesitated, his fists dropping an inch as he glanced around the room again, this time less a soldier analyzing his chances at surviving and more a person trying to figure out where they are. 

“Wha’s happ’nin?” Pidge slurred as he sat up, knocking his glasses back into place. Shiro tensed up again, and Lance prepared himself to talk him down, but before he had to Shiro shook his head hard and relaxed his posture. 

“Sorry guys.” He muttered. Lance let his hands drop with a sigh of relief, even as Hunk stood from his place on the floor and gave him a concerned look. Pidge remained on the floor, watching all of them with a confused frown. 

“I don’t know why I…” He shook his head again. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright.” Hunk answered in his patented comfort voice. “We’re all a little on edge and freaked out right now.”

“Speaking of which.” Pidge’s voice draws all of their attention, and he makes a small gesture over to the corner, where all that’s visible is dark hair peeking over the edge of the sofa.

_ Shit, Keith, right.  _

Shiro seems to be thinking the same thing, because he swears colorfully and practically sprints across the room to reach him. But of course the sound of pounding feet just scares Keith more.

“Get away!” He shouts, shattering the fragile quiet that had descended across the room. All of a sudden Lance feels more exhausted than he’s ever felt in his life. His heartbeat feels like it ought to echo in the hollow chamber that is his torso.

“Get away from me! Don’t  _ touch _ \--” His voice cracks, he’s dodging Shiro’s grasping hand, he sounds desperate. But there’s a sadder note just behind it, like resignation as his shoulders shake with swallowed sobs. Like he knows no matter how much he protests, no one will listen to him. 

“Don’t touch me, get away, don’t don’t don’t--”

“Keith.” Shiro is hissing, still trying to catch hold of the flailing boy. “Keith, it’s alright, it’s alright--”

“Shiro, stop.” Lance finds himself saying, already moving forward. He knows better than to grab Shiro without warning, but he kneels close and says again, “Stop. You’re only making it worse.”

Abruptly, Shiro pulls his hands away and sits back on his heels, a tearful look on his face. Both he and Lance shuffled back to give Keith more room, who was on the verge of hyperventilating and burying his face in his knees. 

“Touch used to help.” Shiro muttered, half to himself and half to Lance. “It would help ground him. But… I guess that’s changed, huh?”

Lance, personally, has no idea how to respond to that. Back at the Garrison he’d known precisely two versions of Keith: the hyperfocused, no-nonsense classroom Keith who scribbled notes like his life depended on it, and the smirking, confident simulator Keith that pulled tricks no one had ever thought of before and blew Lance’s scores out of the water. It was a bit of a shock to hear that Keith had needed grounding at all back then. 

Keith’s breaths had begun to slow by then, but he still refused to look up from his sheltered position, like if he didn’t look none of them were really there. 

Shiro gave him a few more moments to compose himself before speaking. “Keith.” His voice still hid a small wobble. “Do you remember where you are?”

Huffing in a breath, Keith gave a jerky nod, still not looking up. “Desert. With you.” 

Lance wondered how long it would take for Shiro and Keith’s voices to stop sounding raspy from disuse. Wondered how long it would take them to remember how to socialize, how to hold a conversation, how to feel some sort of  _ normal.  _

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“I just-- I thought-- Might’ve been a dream.”

“I thought the same thing.” Shiro said, giving Keith a wry half smile. “Sorry I dumped you on the floor like that.”

Finally, Keith glanced up at them. “It’s ok.”

Shiro gently extended a hand to him, and Keith only flinched a little at the oncoming fingers before steeling himself and grasping them. Lance can tell-- can see it in the set of his jaw and the glint in his eye. Keith is trying. He’s trying so hard not to give in to the fear. 

Shiro pulls both of them to their feet and Lance rises with them, feeling Pidge and Hunk staring holes in his back. Shiro and Keith return to the couch, and Lance slinks back to the other two cadets, and for a long moment there’s tense silence in the room. 

Hunk is the first one to speak up.

“So… now that we’re all awake, I guess we should talk this out.”

Shiro and Keith wound up back on the couch, with Lance and the other two sitting in a semi circle in front of it. This time Pidge leads the conversation, the sunlight reflecting threateningly off of his glasses.

“What happened to the other people on your crew?” 

Lance shot him a look at his blunt question, but he wasn’t looking back. Shiro had his full attention as he fidgeted with his metal fingers. Eventually he sighed. 

“I don’t remember very much.” He admitted quietly, eyes flicking around the room like he couldn’t decide what he wanted to look at. “I remember Matt and Commander Holt being with me when we were taken, but after that I can’t tell for sure. I know they weren’t with me when I ran.”

“Taken?” Lance asked before Pidge could say anything else. “Taken by who?”

Shiro sucked in a breath, and Keith leaned further into his side, listening just as raptly as the others. 

“This is gonna sound crazy. But we were taken by aliens. Plucked right off of Kerberos.”

The cadets nodded, already past the shock after the whole mess of Shiro’s rescue. Keith narrowed his eyes but didn’t say anything one way or the other. 

“They weren’t very nice.” Shiro continued with a dry chuckle that sounded like it hurt more than it was worth. “They threw us into prison pretty much right away. After that it’s… all kind of a blur. I remember fighting, but…” He looked down at his metal hand, carefully curling the fingers. “Anyway, they’re looking for some kind of weapon that they think is hidden here, on Earth. And we have to find it first, or the whole planet is in danger.”

_ Shit, that’s heavy _ .

When Lance speaks, he’s not entirely sure what he’s saying. 

“Do you know what the weapon is?”

Shiro shakes his head. “All I know is that it’s something called Voltron.”

All three cadets sit up ramrod straight at the memory of what Pidge had been babbling about before Shiro showed up. 

“That’s the same word I heard on the alien radio chatter I was picking up.” He said, eliciting a surprised look from Shiro. 

“Did you pick up anything else?” Asked Keith with a curious head tilt. Pidge frowned and pushed up his glasses with a knuckle.

“Just a bunch of random numbers. I ran them through every code breaking technique I know, but nothing.” His shoulders hunched a little at that. 

“Can I see? Do you have them written down somewhere?” 

Pidge nodded in answer to Hunk’s question and crawled over to his backpack, producing a small notebook that he handed off to Hunk. 

“They should be near the end of the entries.  _ Do not  _ read anything else.”

Hunk flapped a hand at him, and for a moment there’s silence as Hunk studies the reams of numbers scrawled in the book in Pidge’s chicken scratch handwriting. 

“I told you aliens were real.” Keith murmured softly to Shiro, and to all of their surprise Shiro laughed. Not a bitter chuckle or a huff of breath, but an actual, full blown laugh as he pulled Keith in and ruffled his hair. And Keith smiled back, a genuine smile, and goddamnit Lance was gonna cry if they kept this up. 

After a few more minutes, Hunk sighed and scratched at the back of his neck. 

“I may be wrong,” He said, “But these numbers kinda look like a Fraunhofer line.”

Keith did that curious head tilt thing again. “Frown who?”

“It’s a line that describes the emission spectrum of an element. If we can track down some spare electronics, I could make a machine to track it.”

Pidge scooted close to him, peering over his shoulder at the notebook. “What does the line look like?”

“Here, I’ll draw a graph, just gimme a minute.”

Keith shot Lance a confused look, and Lance responded with a loose shrug. Honestly he remembered learning about this stuff, he just hadn’t thought to apply it to the current situation. But of course Keith had missed nearly a year of instruction-- of course he wouldn’t know. 

“Here.” Hunk held up the (admittedly a little messy) sketch of a graph. The line veered sharply up in some places, before leveling out and dropping in others to form boxy plateaus. The image did nothing for Lance, but Keith sucked in a harsh breath and reached out for the notebook, which Hunk obligingly handed over. 

“This might just be a coincidence,” Keith mumbled after a minute of studying the graph, “But this looks just like some cliffs nearby.”

“That might be where the Voltron is.” Lance chimed in, and the others nodded solemnly. 

“There should be a box of stuff you can use in the shed outside, Hunk.” Keith continued, apparently oblivious to the confused looks the other three were exchanging. “Then I just need to get the hoverbike working again and with that Garrison Jeep all five of us should be able to make it over there.”

“Uhh…” Lance raised a pointed eyebrow in Keith’s direction. “Hoverbike?”

“Oh, right.” Shiro said, finally seeming to realize the confusion. “Keith is the friend I mentioned. This place is his.” 

Keith looked up at Lance with a frown. “How long was I in there?”

Lance bit his lip. “Well, I guess that depends. How long did it take them to find you after you got booted from the Garrison?”

“Same night.” Keith answered with a scowl. “I barely made it a mile down the road.”

“Oh.” Lance gulped a bit nervously and fiddled with the zipper on his hoodie. “Then it’s been about… ten months. I think. Give or take a week or two.”

Keith stared at him for a long moment, eyes glazing over, and Shiro reached over to gingerly squeeze his shoulder. 

“There’s gonna be a lot of dust in the engine.” He said faintly, and it takes Lance a second to realize he’s talking about the hoverbike again. 

“Yeah, I guess so.”

Hunk speaks quickly, before another awkward silence can fall over the room. 

“Keith, do you have any spare clothes around here somewhere? You and Shiro would probably feel better if you changed.”

It takes Keith a second to shake himself out of his stupor. “Yeah, if I’m remembering right,” He says that part a bit bitterly, “There should be a box of clothes on the top shelf of the closet.”

Hunk hurries to fetch the box, and Lance tries his damned hardest to forget how empty Keith’s eyes looked. 

* * *

After they dug up the old box of clothing, Hunk left the house to go fetch the scrap electronics and build his machine, Pidge and Lance following to give Keith and Shiro some privacy while they changed.

Keith still felt like he was having an out of body experience. There was no way any of this was real. Shiro, back from the dead. Busted out of his top secret prison by three Garrison cadets. And to top it all off, he’d been gone for ten months. Ten whole months-- almost a year. Almost as long as Shiro, and no one ever noticed. If Shiro hadn’t come back…

Keith shuddered and blamed it on the drafty house. 

The clothes in the box were old ones, some of his and some of his dads, from before he even went to the Garrison. By some miracle his still fit him, and his dads fit Shiro. He couldn’t quite remember the gray t-shirt or the red jacket, but the texture was soft and familiar, even as it also felt foreign and heavy. He wasn’t used to this kind of stuff anymore, but damn if it didn’t feel good. By the time he started pulling on the boots and fingerless gloves, he felt more grounded. Almost human. 

“You have scars.” Shiro murmured to him as he pulled on his own pair of boots. Keith pointedly refused to look down where he knew his body was covered in thin white lines. They were surgery scars, neat and straight from precision cutting. A few rougher ones existed, like the red acid burn now covered by a glove, but for the most part they were cold and clinical, just like everything else about his time there. 

“So do you.” Was his answer, and it was true. Shiro had just as many if not more markings on him, but his were of a different variety. They were rough and torn, many of them red and purple and raised from poor healing. They weren’t from experiments or surgery-- they were from fighting; combat scars. 

“Do you…” Shiro released a breath and ran his metal fingers through his now white hair. “Do you have trouble remembering, too?”

Keith nodded slowly. His hair was too long, brushing the bottoms of his shoulder blades, and he made a mental note to cut it later on. 

“Yeah, but it’s different. I remember everything that happened there. It’s before that’s fuzzy. I’m not missing any big chunks or anything, but the details…” 

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m not an it.  _

“The details aren’t all there.”

Shiro nodded once, and Keith got to his feet. He remembered seeing a couple of utility belts in the box, which would come in handy on their journey.

_ What is even happening right now? _

“I’m still not sure this is real.” He found himself muttering to himself as he tossed Shiro once of the belts. He caught it without looking and pulled it around his waist, fastening it securely. 

“Me neither.” Shiro admitted with a wry shake of his head. “But if it’s not, it’s certainly better than whatever reality we’re stuck in, right?”

“Right.” Keith’s voice sounded distant even to his own ears. He automatically reached for the sheath on the back of his belt, only to freeze when his fingers brushed nothing but air.

“Oh. They still have my knife.” Something dully pounded in his chest. That knife had been important to him, given to him by his father, but now…

“Do you want to go back and get it?”

Cold flushed down his body at the mere thought of returning to that place. 

“No.” He said quickly. “No, it’s ok. I have others.” Before he could think too hard about it, he shoved a different tactical knife into the sheath and dropped a pocket knife into one of his belt pouches, just in case.

He couldn’t think about it. The memories were right there, lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to leap forward and grab hold of him again. He couldn’t let that happen. They had things to do, he couldn’t fall apart now, he had to focus. 

He followed Shiro out of the shack, and both of them stopped and sighed at the same time, tilting their heads back towards the sky. The sun was no brighter than the fluorescent lights from before, but it was  _ warm _ . Keith couldn’t remember the last time he felt gentle heat like this. That, and the smell of dust instead of disinfectant, the stirring of the breeze over his cheeks instead of suffocating filtered air… God, he could  _ cry _ . 

Shiro looks much the same, and both of them need a second to bite back their tears and get a move on. Back to the whole ‘Find the alien weapon before the evil aliens do and save the world’ thing. 

He can see the three cadets sitting in the sand in front of the small shed, Pidge and Hunk bent over the remains of whatever electronics had survived, trying to build their machine. Only Lance is watching them, brows furrowed in a pinched expression. 

Keith tears his eyes away and quickly moved to the tarp covered lump he knows to be his dad’s old hoverbike, pushing away the strange thoughts in the back of his head. 

He didn’t recognize any of the cadets, and he had no idea if it was because he just didn’t know them or if his brain had thrown those details out too. 

_ Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Focus. _

With Shiro’s help, he pulled the gray tarp away from the hoverbike, and was surprised to feel a small smile creep it’s way onto his face. The hoverbike was something he could still remember, even if it was hazy, and he couldn’t help the way he ran his fingers over the chipping red paint. Shiro went to the shed to fetch his tools, and within minutes he was in a familiar position; on his back in the dust, underneath the warm metal, arms aching pleasantly as he tinkered with the innards of the bike. 

“Fucking sand.” He muttered to himself, taking note of the grit that had wormed its way into every nook and cranny of the bike. Somewhere nearby Shiro chuckled, and for just that moment Keith felt like himself again. Then it was gone, and he was back to wondering who the hell he even was anymore. 

It took several hours for Hunk to build his machine, and just as long for Keith to get the hoverbike back in working order. For that small amount of time he could lose himself, not have to think or actively shove down the memories lurking just out of reach like a cold wind at your back while you face the fire. He could just be, just exist in the workings of the engine above him. He’d never claimed to be a genius engineer like Hunk seemed to be, but he knew his way around a plane and a bike and he could make it work. He could finally do something instead of cowering in a corner and dreading the moment when the doctors came for him. 

He may not be feeling quite like himself yet (whoever that was supposed to be) but he at least felt human. Which was more than he could say for the last ten months.

* * *

So. Space. Voltron. Aliens. Magic lion spaceships. These were things that were happening now. And honestly Keith should’ve been more freaked out about that, but strangely all he felt was apathy. 

The cadets didn’t feel the same way. Pidge was hellbent on finding her family (who turned out to be the remaining crew from Kerberos), Hunk was terrified of being stuck in an intergalactic war, and Lance was beside himself with worry about how his family would take the news of his spontaneous disappearance. Keith had no such reservations or attachments.

All the family he had was right here with him in Shiro. Sure he had that shack back on Earth, but it had never felt like home, the planet itself even less so. As far as a future went, he had none. If he went back to the Garrison they’d chuck him right back into that lab. No, the safest place for him was up here amongst the stars, who even knew how far from their solar system. 

That’s not to say everything was perfect. Far from it. For one thing, Keith  _ hated  _ the Castle of Lions. Everyone else seemed to be in awe of it, with it’s graceful spires and glowing crystals, but for Keith it was nothing more than another white cage. 

_ White white white.  _ White everywhere. Why the hell did Alteans like white so much. 

It wasn’t so bad during the day. Sometimes when he walked through the hallways the walls would start to close in on him, and when he was alone he often resorted to sprinting through them as quickly as he could to get to wherever he was going, trying to stave off the dread that clung to his heels. When the others were around he could distract himself with the splashes of color. The color coded V’s on their armor. The dark tan of Allura, Hunk, and Lance’s skin. The green on Pidge’s sweatshirt. Coran’s ridiculous orange mustache. Shiro’s black vest.

Nighttime-- or as close to it as they could get in space-- is when it got really bad. He couldn’t stand the bedroom he’d been assigned; white walls and floors everywhere, cold and clinical. He couldn’t bear to let his eyes close in there, much less sleep. If he slept, if he let his guard down, he would be grabbed again. The thought made no sense, but the fear was ingrained into his cells at this point and there was no escaping it. 

He took to sleeping in Red. The light in her cockpit was a warm crimson, the steel making up her insides gray rather than stark white. That combined with Red’s protective purring in the back of his head made it easy to rest there. After stealing a couple of more blankets, he wound up with a nice nest on the floor, and he could finally sleep with Red promising to keep watch.

Red was a godsend. She was in his head-- she could understand him better than anyone, even Shiro. Probably because Keith hadn’t spoken to Shiro about either of their imprisonment since that day in the shack. Their trauma, though similar, was very different in important ways, which was only becoming more clear the longer they stayed in space and fought the Galra. 

Sneaking up on either of them, intentionally or not, was ill advised. Shiro’s first instinct was to drop into a fighting stance and take a swing, and only quick dodging had saved Pidge from a broken nose a few times she hadn’t made her footsteps loud enough. At first Keith was the opposite and tended to bolt if surprised, usually making it down a hall and around a corner before he realized what was happening. But as training made him stronger, his reactions got more aggressive, to the point where he actually flipped Lance over his shoulder once and slammed him to the floor before he could think. 

Training was a completely different kettle of fish. Despite his obvious skill, Shiro tended to freeze up when the gladiator bore down on him, visions of sentries dancing behind his eyes. About seven times out of ten Keith could hold it together, but sometimes the adrenaline got to his head and he stopped seeing the white plated gladiator and instead saw a white coated scientist, here to shove him back into a cage. When that happened he lost all his barriers and went into an animal rage that wouldn’t abate until the gladiator was in pieces on the floor. When that happened Shiro usually cleared the others out of the combat area so that they wouldn’t accidentally get hurt. 

It was difficult, but Keith was trying. He was trying so hard. He knew Shiro was trying too, which is why he was surprised to run into him one night on the way to Red’s hangar, looking tired and haggard and just generally miserable. 

“Hey, Keith.” He said with an exhausted smile. “What’re you doing up? You should be in bed.”

“I could ask you the same thing.” Keith retorted, tilting his head slightly as he examined Shiro. He was leaning up against the wall just outside his room, seemingly not doing anything but loitering. The pieces clicked together.

“You don’t like your room either, huh?”

Shiro blinked in surprise, only to smile a bit sheepishly at Keith’s understanding expression. 

“No,” He admitted. “It’s silly, but the room is pretty small, and the door locks from the outside.” He shrugged self consciously and looked at the floor. “Pretty ungrateful of me I guess, but--”

“It’s not.” Keith interrupted brusquely. “I don’t like mine either. Too white.” He crossed his arms, trying to hold in any indication that his control was slipping. “Have you tried sleeping in your lion? That’s what I do.”

Shiro chuckled a bit at that, as if it was something he expected Keith to do. “Yeah, I tried, but Black isn’t much better.” He didn’t elaborate, and it took Keith an awkwardly long moment to figure out what he was trying to say.

_ Oh, the lights are purple. Like Galra ships.  _

In true Keith style, he spoke before he thought. 

“Get your blanket and your pillow,” He said, ignoring Shiro’s questioning look, “And then come with me.”

He led Shiro to the hangar, and that night they slept in Red together, and for once the two of them both slept peacefully. 

* * *

The Alteans caused their own little problems. Their culture was clearly much different from the humans, and that was without the addition of the trauma to complicate things. The first problem came the very first day, when Coran apparently decided to ‘rank them by height’. Both Shiro and Keith had stiffened up a bit when he’d addressed Pidge as Number Five, but as long as it was someone else it didn’t bother them that much. But while the others were gone looking for the lions the mustached man tried to strike up a conversation with him, and that’s when things started going south. 

“Number Four!” He’d called cheerfully across the bridge, and every muscle in Keith’s body immediately tightened up. For months,  _ months _ , he’d been called nothing but a number, nothing but Subject Eleven, another experiment in a long line of others. He couldn’t go back to that. He wouldn’t let them take his humanity away from him again. 

“Don’t call me that.” He snarled, surprising even himself with the animosity in his voice. Coran paused in his approach, and Allura turned to fix him with a narrow eyed suspicious stare. “Don’t  _ ever  _ call me that.” 

“As you wish, my boy.” Said Coran in a carefully cautious voice. “But I don’t think we’ve been introduced properly.”

_ Oh. Right. _

He sucked in a deep breath to steady himself before he answered. “Keith. My name’s Keith.”

“Very well, nice to meet you, Keith.” Coran said with a bright smile. “Now, let me tell you about the Red Lion. That one used to get up to all sorts of trouble.”

Keith only half listened, the other half of his brain anxiously running around in circles. 

_ My name is Keith Kogane. My brother’s name is Takashi Shirogane. I’m not an it. _

Allura wasn’t so bad at first, despite her overbearing method of training. But she had a very military way of running things, which could clash with the needs of the younger paladins. Keith adapted fairly well, but a few weeks in something went wrong. As they were prone to do, it would seem.

They were just coming off of a rough mission. Red had been tossed around more than a little, and it was mostly Keith’s fault. In the middle of the battle he’d gone into one of his rages and tore into the Galra cruisers with no regard for the fact that he was leaving the rest of the team far behind, not stopping until a ram from a fighter jet sent him flying from his seat and into the side of Red’s hull. The jolt of pain from the resulting cracked ribs dragged him back to reality and he’d returned to the formation. 

Allura was waiting in the hangar when he returned, along with Shiro. The other paladins were nowhere to be found, and for that Keith was grateful. He didn’t have to work so hard to hide the wince of pain that forced its way out of him every time he moved when it was just their leaders. 

“What was that, Keith?” Allura demanded of him once he’d made it down Red’s ramp. Keith ducked his head. He was so tired, and his chest hurt, and all he wanted to do was get out of his armor and curl up back in Red where her purr would lure him to sleep. 

“Sorry, Allura.” He muttered. That apparently was not enough.

“You’re sorry.” She scoffed and tossed her head. “You broke formation, plunged recklessly into battle with no regard for the safety of yourself or your fellow paladins, put the entire operation at risk, and all you have to say is sorry?”

Keith, not knowing what else he could possibly say, merely shrugged and then winced as the movement jostled his ribs. Shiro, who so far had merely been watching the interaction, took a concerned step forward.

“Were you injured?” He questioned gently, which Keith answered with a non committal grunt. 

“Just a couple cracked ribs.” Allura tsked at that and shook her head. 

“Alright, healing pod it is then. Come along, paladins.”

Allura muttered to herself the whole way to the med bay, frustrated phrases about Red Paladins and running off on their own. And Keith was fine.

Then they stepped into the med bay, and he felt something in him crack that wasn’t his ribs. 

He’d been avoiding this room for a reason. Besides bringing Lance here and coming back when he woke up, he hadn’t set foot in the infirmary. It wasn’t much like the lab back on Earth, but the aura of the room was too similar for him to feel comfortable there. 

It wasn’t until that moment Keith realized they were going to try and put him in a pod, and he jerked to a sudden stop as though someone had glued his shoes to the floor. 

Shiro paused alongside and shot him a worried look. 

“Keith, you ok?”

“I, uh…” He hated how his voice wavered. “I don’t think a pod is necessary. I can just heal on my own.”

Shiro’s brow creased into a frown. “Bud, cracked ribs take months to heal. We can’t have you out of commision that long.”

Keith shook his head and took a step back, hugging his arms close to his chest. “Shiro, I c-- I don’t want a pod.” He affixed Shiro with a pleading look, willing him to understand and breathing a sigh of relief when Shiro’s eyes softened in response. He stepped close to Keith, dipping his voice low so that Allura wouldn’t hear as she fiddled with the pods across the room. 

“Look Keith, I get it. I really do. But we need you healed up and at a hundred percent.”

Glancing across the room, Keith eyed the pods with trepidation and shivered. 

“I  _ can’t _ .” He hissed furtively between his teeth. “‘S too much like a cage.”

Shiro visibly hesitated. His mouth was fixed into a strained grimace, clearly feeling for Keith but knowing they didn’t have another choice. 

“Does knowing you’ll be asleep the whole time make you feel better?”

Keith’s heart rate tripled, and Shiro must have seen him go pale because he immediately cringed back. 

“ _ No. _ ” If anything, that made it worse. If he was asleep he couldn’t keep himself safe, he couldn’t fight back, couldn’t stop them from doing whatever they wanted to him. He couldn’t lose control like that again, he couldn’t let himself be that vulnerable or he was going to be hurt  _ again _ .

“Hey, hey, breathe.” Shiro put his hand on Keith’s shoulder and he leaned into it, trying his best to get his breath back under control. The pain from his broken bones wasn’t helping. 

“Alright, the pod is ready.” Allura said, voice ringing across the room loudly, sounds of footsteps following. “Let’s get you suited up.”

Jerking out of Shiro’s hold, Keith stumbled back several steps until his armor hit the door, leaving Allura to stare at him in confusion. 

“N-no.” He stuttered, shaking his head as hard as he could. “No, I can’t go i-in a pod. You c-can’t make me!”

Allura rolled her eyes. “Keith, enough. This is hardly becoming behavior for a Paladin.”

Keith scrunched himself against the door, voice failing him, which of course didn’t help convince Allura at all.

_ Doesn’t matter. They won’t listen anyway. They never listen.  _

“Allura--”

The princess smacked away the hand Shiro reached out for her, looking only more vexed. Today hadn’t been easy for anybody, and Keith having a breakdown wasn’t improving her mood. She’d long since lost her patience with these inexperienced children masquerading as soldiers. 

“Keith,” She began through gritted teeth, blind to Shiro’s frantic expression and Keith’s terrified body language, “You are a paladin, not a child. If you won’t get in the pod yourself I will not hesitate to sedate you.”

Keith practically felt his pupils go to pinpricks as cold adrenaline shot through his system. His fingers coiled into fists at his sides. He couldn’t go under, he couldn’t let her put him under, if he went under they were going to cut him open and shove him back into the cage and take his name away and he would rather  _ die  _ than let that happen again-- 

“Allura!”

Shiro threw himself between the two of them with his arms spread wide, hiding Keith from Allura’s line of sight. His voice was thunderous, but he could take comfort in the fact that the lightning wasn’t aimed at him. 

“I don’t know how things are on Altea, but we will never force the paladins to do anything against their will. Not while I’m Black Paladin. Understand?”

Silence descended upon the room like a ton of bricks. Keith couldn’t see Allura’s expression, couldn’t gauge how she was going to react to Shiro’s open challenge on her authority, and somehow that made it worse. 

Slowly, carefully, he inched his hand towards the button that would open the door. 

“You’re right, Shiro.” Said Allura in the softest voice either of them had ever heard from the princess. “That was… far out of line. My deepest apologies, to you and Keith.”

Shiro let his arms drop, only to cross them over his chest in a show of solidarity. He said nothing. 

“... May I pass?”

“Of course, princess.” His tone had softened as well, thunder rumbling away into the distance. He turned back to Keith and reached out to tug him gently to the side. Allura passed by quickly with her head down, and with a soft swish as the door shut, they were alone. Keith let out the breath he had been holding, suddenly feeling shaky on his feet and exhausted. 

Shiro steadied him with two hands on his shoulders. 

“Are you ok?”

Keith dragged in a shuddering breath and forced himself to nod. It was ok. He was fine. He just had to pull himself together, lock it all up in the darkest corner of his mind where it belonged and couldn’t hurt him. 

“Would it help if I stayed?”

Keith frowned up at him in confusion, so Shiro elaborated.

“While you were in the pod. Would it help if I stood guard? I won’t let anyone else in while you sleep.” 

Keith dug his teeth into the inside of his lip, trying to quell the panic welling up in his chest and seeping out between his cracked ribs. 

“I  _ can’t _ .”

“I’m sorry Keith, but you have to.”

Eventually Keith relents and goes in the pod, and just like he promised Shiro is there to catch him when he wakes up.

* * *

And as if all of that wasn’t enough, something else had been bothering him for weeks, kicking around in the back of his head with everything else he tried not to think about. At some point Pidge had mentioned something about needing Shiro’s Galra hand to interact with the tech on their ships, and he’d personally witnessed his team having to rip the arms off of sentry bots to get through doors. 

But on the Balmera, all he’d had to do was press the handprint on the screen, and the hangar door closed. 

He tries to tell himself it’s just a coincidence. That it’s nothing. That he’s overreacting. But those other memories are screaming at him, banging at the locked door he shoved them behind, that woman’s voice echoing back at him. Asking about his father's knife. Where he got it, where did it come from, what did the symbol mean, what was it made of. He hadn’t known any of the answers then, and he still didn’t, but he got a sick feeling whenever he thought about it.

Then Ulaz showed up.

And his knife had the same symbol on it that Keith’s had before those scientists took it from him.

And he fell apart. 

Shiro finds him a week after they make contact with the Blade of Marmora,  coiled up in the space made by Red’s curved tail, sobbing into his knees and on the verge of hyperventilating. His thoughts are running around in circles too quickly for him to catch up with or even register completely and not even Red’s loud purring and concerned growls can break through. All he can feel is cold cold cold fear clawing at his insides and he feels like his heart may explode at any moment.

“Keith?”

It’s Shiro’s voice, thick with worry, and Keith opens his mouth to tell him to go away, to not come near him, but that isn’t what comes out. What comes out is pathetic at best and mortifying at worst, but the panic crawling up his throat doesn’t care.

“They were right.” He blurts out, barely comprehensible. “Shiro, they were right, they were right, I’m not human, I’m not human,  _ i’mnothumanI’mnothumanI’mnot-- _ ”

“Woah woah woah, Keith, what are you talking about? What’s going on?” Shiro kneels down beside him, stretches out a hand, but Keith’s brain is already off and running in a completely new line of terror and he flinches away from it. Because now he’d admitted it, now someone  _ knew _ , and the last time someone knew…

The thoughts come pouring out without the slightest hint of a filter. 

“Oh God Pidge and Hunk are gonna dissect me to try and figure out how I’m different just like them and Allura and Coran won’t stop them because I’m Galra and I can’t be trusted and Lance hates me anyway and you’re gonna help them throw my body out the airlock when they’re done with me and Red won’t save me because  _ I’m Galra and I can’t _ \--”

He gasps for air, unable to keep going, and Shiro takes the opportunity to speak again. 

“Keith, I need you to breathe. You’re alright, you’re safe, just breathe.”

Keith automatically obeys, sucking in a breath and holding it until his lungs burned before releasing it again. He repeats the pattern, over and over, while Shiro steadily moves closer to him with a hand on his shoulder until he’s sitting next to him in the coil of Red’s tail. Above them Red is growling, as though saying to Shiro  _ Be careful with my paladin.  _

Keith’s back shudders, and he lets his head fall against Shiro’s chest. He could breathe easier now, but he still felt shaky and frozen with adrenaline, jittery and ready to bolt at any moment. Shiro is steady and warm underneath him, and gently trailed his metal hand up and down Keith’s back in an attempt at comfort. 

“Ok, now do you want to explain to me what you were talking about?”

It takes him awhile, but through shuddering shaking breaths Keith manages to explain. How he made the door work on the Balmera. How the people at the Garrison had been so insistent that his knife wasn’t from Earth. How the symbol on the hilt was a perfect match for the one on Ulaz’s. 

“They were right, Shiro.” He stuttered once he was done. “Th-they were right, the whole time.”

“No.” Shiro responded firmly, hugging him close. “No, Keith. Their hypothesis about your DNA may have been correct, but that doesn’t mean they were right.” A pause, then, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Keith couldn’t stop his fingers from fisting into Shiro’s shirt, holding him in place. He didn’t open his mouth for fear of making an even bigger fool of himself, but his brain was running off without him again. 

_ No no no, he’s gonna go tell the others and when he comes back they’ll put me under and shove me back in a cage and cut me open to see how my insides work-- _

“Hey, I’m just gonna go grab Coran’s medical tablet, ok? I want to do a quick scan, just to see if you’re right.”

_ No! No more scans, no more tests, no more experiments, I can’t do it again-- _

He’s shaking. “I don’t want to go back.” The words are a pitiful whimper and he wants to hate himself but his entire brain is wrapped up in fight or flight. 

“You’re not. You don’t even have to come with me to the infirmary, alright? I’ll be gone for five minutes, tops. I promise.”

He doesn’t want to let go, he doesn’t want Shiro to leave, but he knows that what he wants doesn’t matter, no one ever listens to him, they just do what they want, so he forces his fingers to uncurl from Shiro’s vest. 

“I’ll be right back.” Shiro promises again, then ruffles his hair and leaves. 

Before his body heat has a chance to fade Red is wrapping him up in heat again, purring gently now that Keith could hear her again. 

_ Remember, paladin. Remember. “If they do, I’ll tear them apart.”  _

It’s Shiro’s voice, that night in the shack, false calm blanketing over the ball of barely contained rage. 

_ I’m scared, Red.  _

_ I know cub. I won’t let anyone hurt you. I swear on my life. “I swear on my life.”  _

Shiro’s voice again. Keith closes his eyes. 

Just like he promised, Shiro returns. And just like he promised, he’s alone, with nothing new but the medical tablet from the infirmary. Scans are completely non-invasive, nothing has to even touch him, but that doesn’t stop him from flinching with the tablet beeps to indicate the scan is complete. Shiro does his customary shoulder touch while he scrolls through the new information. Keith keeps his eyes closed. 

After a few minutes of tense silence, Shiro makes a sound of frustration. 

“I don’t know how to read any of this. Maybe if I ping this over to Pidge she’d be able to make sense of it.”

Keith scrunches himself into a smaller ball, ducking his head and covering it with his arms. In his mind's eye he can see that look Pidge gets when she finds something new to pick over, something fascinating, and can only see it directed towards him while she runs test after test after test just like those people at the Garrison. 

“It’s alright. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

Keith tries his best to believe him.

* * *

Pidge had just arrived at her bunk, determined to go to bed at a decent time for once in her life, when she heard a chime from her tablet. She opened it to find a file had been sent to her, with a note attached. 

_ Take a look at this, DNA specifically, and tell me what you see. Don’t tell the others.  _

_ -Shiro _

An eyebrow rose at the cryptic message, and only rose higher when she realized the file was a medical scan of Keith. Why would Shiro want her to look at Keith’s DNA in secret? Still, whatever was up she was curious now…

Half an hour later she sent a message back to Shiro.

_ Meet me in my bunk _ .

She was already outside the door when he arrived, hugging her tablet to her chest. He’d barely shown up, looking tired and haggard, when she opened her mouth. 

“Where’s Keith?”

Shiro grimaced and pushed his hair back with his metal hand. “He’s in Red’s hangar. What did you find out?”

Pidge frowned, unhappy with the idea of talking about Keith’s medical scan to anyone but the Red Paladin, but then again he trusted Shiro more than anyone else. 

“I looked at the DNA scan, like you asked.” She said with a sigh. “And I’m not going to mince words. Keith has two additional nucleic acids making up his DNA that humans don’t have.”

Shiro only nodded solemnly, as though he’d been expecting this outcome, and waited for Pidge to continue.

“I ran it through the database of data saved by the healing pods, and the closest match to the other two acids belonged to Galra.” 

“So, he’s--”

“About thirty two percent Galra, from what I could tell.” Pidge tightened her hold on her tablet. She was more than aware that there were going to be repercussions from this discovery, and it would probably be up to her and Shiro to run damage control. “So one of his parents was human, and the other was probably a Galra hybrid, not full blooded.” 

Shiro crossed his arms and sighed, shoulders slumping. He’d probably been expecting this news, but it appeared that he didn't know what to do with it once he had it. 

“I really think I should talk to Keith.” 

With a cringe, Shiro shook his head. “That’s not advisable. He’s pretty out of it right now.”

Pidge raised an eyebrow. “How out of it?”

“He thinks you and Hunk are going to dissect him while the rest of us stand back and do nothing about it.”

That drew a hard flinch out of her, sick dread sinking in her stomach. If this is how she felt thinking about that possibility, how scared must Keith be right now?

“Ok, yeah, I can see why me showing up might be a bad idea.”

Shiro nodded his thanks and leaned his shoulder against the wall, pushing his hair back again in his usual stressed motion. “Look, I don’t want to keep this from the others. Secrets will do nothing but tear the team apart, especially if Keith is constantly living in fear of what might happen if they find out.”

Pidge narrowed her eyes. “I’m sensing a ‘but’.”

The tiniest smirk quirked Shiro’s lip. “But, Keith needs me right now, and he’s nowhere near calm enough to have this discussion. So I want you to take point on this.”

“Me?!” Pidge’s jaw dropped right after her exclamation. “Why me?”

“Because I trust you to be succinct and calm and present the information without making it an emotional napalm strike.”

Pidge closed her mouth and took a second to think. Shiro wasn’t necessarily wrong about any of those things, but if she didn’t do it right and someone lashed out at Keith, the emotional consequences could be dire.  But then again…

Ah fuck it.

“Alright. I’ll try my best.”

Shiro’s smile was shaky, but sincere. “Thank you, Pidge.”

“Just give me a few vargas to figure out how I’m gonna do this. Stay with Keith.”

* * *

Keith fought it as hard as he could, but his body betrayed him, and he fell asleep in Red while Shiro was gone. His brain promptly followed his body’s example, dragging him into a nightmare. This one was different than his usual type, because this time it wasn’t the faceless people in white coats.

This time it was Pidge, leaning over him with the light reflecting off of her glasses, that cocky ‘I just hacked you motherfucker’ smirk on her face. It was Hunk, holding him down easily while they waited for the anaesthetic to kick in. It was Allura, already pulling on the red paladin armor, and Coran, shaking his head and murmuring about faulty lion bonds. It was Lance, loudly bragging about how this definitely made him the best paladin now and grinning maniacally. It was Red, conspicuously absent from that place in the back of his mind, comforting purr nowhere to be found.

It was Shiro, watching with furious eyes as Keith screamed and begged for him to do something, to help him,  _ please, Takashi, please,  _ and hissing under his breath, “Traitor.”

He woke sobbing, scrambling against the cold metal floor in a desperate attempt to get away from Hunk’s hands and Pidge’s scalpel and Shiro’s angry eyes, only to find himself hopelessly tangled up in blankets. Except they weren’t blankets, they were restraints, he was being tied down again and he was trapped and there was no way out and he was going to  _ die _ and his friends were going to be the ones to kill him.

Sounds are finally beginning to filter back in, and he can hear a low voice in the background but he instinctively blocks out the words, afraid to hear numbers. If he heard Shiro calling him  _ Subject Eleven _ in that venomous tone he’s sure he’d shatter into a million pieces at that very moment and then Pidge would never figure out if his organs were different.  

But the sounds are getting louder, and he can’t block them out forever. Underneath his own sobs and heaving breaths, someone was saying something that sounded suspiciously like his name. Not Number Four or Subject Eleven, but his actual name. 

“Keith. Keith, come on buddy, you need to wake up. Open your eyes for me, I know you can do it.”

“Takashi…?” The word was slurred, barely recognizable, but there’s a pleased note in Shiro’s voice when he responds. 

“Yeah, it’s me. Can you wake up for me bud?”

Keith braces himself and forces his eyes open, immediately letting out a sob of relief when he’s greeted by the sight of Red’s crimson bathed cockpit. 

“Red?” 

The lion rumbled in response, the sound reverberating up through Keith’s torso, finally beginning to slow his racing heartbeat. 

“Can I touch you, Keith?” 

He nods to Shiro, and a second later there are hands on him and he tenses up. But Shiro keeps his touch gentle, barely maneuvering with just his fingertips, unwinding the blankets from around Keith’s sweaty limbs. He murmurs reassurances the whole time, and slowly Keith starts to come down from his terror high. 

“What did the scan say?” He asked once he could trust his voice not to waver and betray him. “Did Pidge find anything?”

Shiro pulls him into a sitting position, settling him against his side before he answers. One hand rises to card through his hair, soothing in it’s repetition. 

“Yeah. Scan said you’re thirty two percent Galra.”

Something in his stomach twists, but it’s almost like his body has passed the threshold of fear. All he feels is a dull buzz and sinking resignation. 

“Great. Is the dissection first or are we skipping right to the airlock?”

Shiro’s grip tightens, Keith doesn’t fight it. He’s sure it’s Shiro gearing up to drag him from the lion, and he’s already decided he isn’t going to struggle. After all, he had no idea how his alien genes would affect him. The scientists were right all along-- he was a threat to his team and his home planet, and it was probably better this way. 

Red growls, long and low and it’s probably one of the scariest sounds he’d ever heard, but he’s not afraid, because he knows it’s not meant for him. 

Shiro loosens his hold and rubs Keith’s shoulder gently, gently. 

“I told you before, neither of those things is going to happen. I swore to protect you with my life, remember?”

“It’s different now.” 

“It’s not. Nothing is different.” Shiro insists, voice savage, then backs off with a sigh. “I asked Pidge to tell the others. I’m going to stay right here with you until she’s done, and I won’t leave, no matter what.”

Keith was tired of this. He was so sick and tired of dread and terror and anxiety roiling in his stomach. So he lets himself relax against Shiro, knowing there are only two outcomes. Either he’s telling the truth or he’s not. Either way it didn’t matter. If he was, everything would be fine. If not, he would be dead soon anyway. 

_ Nothing matters. _

“I won’t leave you, Keith. I promise.”

* * *

Pidge has always hated public speaking. Granted, talking to a small gathering of your closest friends wasn’t nearly as nerve wracking as talking to an entire classroom of other students you’ve never bothered to meet, but the subject matter had her anxiety ramped up to eleven. She couldn’t stop fiddling with the edges of her tablet, which she hadn’t let go of for a moment, while she waited for the other residents of the Castle to file into the lounge as she’d requested. 

Shiro and Keith were conspicuously missing, and the others were definitely taking notice. Especially Allura, who rose her eyebrows pointedly in Pidge’s direction. Pidge elected to ignore it. 

“So, what’s going on here, Pidgeon?” Lance was spread out across the couch as usual, but there was a strain around his smile. He could sense her tension. She took a deep, deep breath and hugged her tablet to her chest. 

“Something has come to my and Shiro’s attention that we need to discuss. But before we can, there are some things that the Alteans,” Here she paused to push up her glasses, shooting a look over at a confused and concerned looking Coran and Allura, “Need to be filled in on.”

Lance frowned at her, and Pidge could practically see him trying to put the puzzle pieces together in his head. His expression cleared surprisingly quickly.

“Is it about Keith?” He asked, eliciting further confusion from the Alteans and a horrified look of realization from Hunk. Pidge nodded, and he gulped nervously. 

“Allura, Coran,” Pidge turned to them, clearing her throat and steeling her resolve. “I’m sure you’ve both noticed that Keith acts a lot more like Shiro than the rest of us.”

“Yes.” Coran said with a solemn nod. “What is it you said Shiro had? That strange acronym?”

“PTSD.” Hunk supplied softly, and Coran nodded again. 

“Yes, that was it! You humans and your love for acronyms. Anyhow, Number Five, are you saying Keith also has this?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“Was Keith held captive by the Galra as well?” Allura’s question was innocent, but Pidge couldn’t help but flinch, imagining the reaction the news was going to garner from the Princess. 

“No. He was a prisoner, but not of the Galra.” Lance and Hunk both sank back into their seats, no doubt remembering that awful video of Keith they’d seen. None of them had watched any more of the videos or looked at any more of the files out of respect for Keith’s privacy. One was enough. “Before we left Earth, Keith was kidnapped and held by a group of scientists. He was there for about… a decaphoeb, I think.”

She had to stop and clear her throat again. She could already feel the hot tears at the corners of her eyes, but she had to keep it together. For Keith.

“They were convinced that he had alien DNA. They kept him in a cage and ran experiments on him, most of which were painful and invasive.”

Allura sat up straighter, mouth flattening into an angry line. Coran looked shocked and sad, but not necessarily surprised. He’d probably picked up on Keith’s behavior before now even without knowing the details. 

“And… he was there for a whole decaphoeb?” Questioned Allura through gritted teeth. Pidge nodded in response, and Allura fisted her hands in her skirt, hanging on to her composure by the skin of her teeth. Pidge was about to shove her off of the edge. 

“Now I want you, all of you, to keep that in mind when I tell you this next bit. I want you to think carefully about your reactions and how they might affect Keith before you leave this room.”

Lance spoke up with an anxious chuckle. “Uh, Pidge, you’re kinda freaking me out.”

“What did you and Shiro find out?” Asked Hunk, looking half scared and half intrigued. Pidge chose to focus on the faces of her fellow Paladins as she said what she’d been rehearsing for the last three hours. 

“About three and half vargas ago, Shiro sent me a scan of Keith and asked me to look at his DNA. So I did, and as it turns out, Keith does have alien DNA.” She didn’t dare pause again before she said it, for fear she’d lose her nerve. “According to my calculations, he’s about thirty two percent Galra.”

Dead silence, while everyone blinked up at her with stunned dull eyes. Allura recovered first, lifting her chin in her princess fashion.

“I’m sorry, I must have misheard. I thought you said that--”

“Keith is Galra. You heard right.”

Allura shut her mouth with a click and directed her eyes to the floor. Coran reached out and put a hand on her back, also staring off into space. Lance bit his lip.

“Does Keith know?” He asked, and Hunk nodded along like he also wanted to know. 

“Yeah, Shiro said he’d tell him.”

“And is he ok?” Asked Hunk. Pidge hesitated for just a second before deciding that she had to tell the truth. Maybe it would snap Allura and Coran out of whatever stupor they were in. 

“Not really. Shiro said he was afraid you and I were going to dissect him while everyone else stood by and watched.”

Hunk’s eyes shone with tears, and Lance’s expression twisted into something unpleasant while he muttered something vile in Spanish. 

“If we ever get back to Earth I’m going to burn the Garrison to the ground, I swear.” 

“If it’s even still standing after all that leaking I did.”

Abruptly, Allura got to her feet, about to stalk out of the room. 

“Wait!” Pidge called without thinking, and she froze, though didn’t turn to face her. That was fine, Pidge could talk to her back just as well as her face.

“I get that you’re probably angry, Allura. I get that you’re probably feeling resentful right now. But don’t go near Keith while you’re still feeling like that. He’ll be able to tell, and he’ll be afraid that you’re planning on killing him, or worse. Alright?”

Allura said nothing in way of response as she swept out the door.

* * *

The other three paladins soon found themselves in Red’s hangar, staring anxiously up at the huge machine. The Lion had her particle barrier down, blocking them out, and seemed to be watching them carefully with gleaming golden eyes.

Pidge cleared her throat. “Keith? Shiro? Are you guys in there?”

For a moment everyone is still, except for Lance who is shifting from foot to foot. Then, with the groan of metal and the hiss of hydraulics, Red knelt and lowered her head to the floor. Her mouth didn’t open, but Shiro’s voice filtered out to them through the particle barrier, carried to them by the speaker system in the lion. 

“Yeah, we’re here. Go ahead and talk-- we can hear you.”

Lance and Hunk exchanged a look while Pidge twisted her fingers into the hem of her sweatshirt. She was the first to build up the nerve to speak with the Red Lion watching them so sharply. 

“I just wanted to tell Keith that I don’t care that he’s Galra. I mean-- I’m not going to run any tests or ask him weird questions or anything.” She took a breath and looked Red in the eye. “Keith, even if your DNA is different, you’re still a human being and my friend, and I’m never going to treat you any other way.”

Red didn’t growl or immediately pounce forward to eat her, so Pidge figured she must have done a decent job and stepped back, relinquishing her position to Lance, who if possible looked even more freaked out than she was. 

“Hey, uh, Keith.” He rubbed the back of his neck and huffed. “Look man, I know I give you a lot of shit. But I like to think we’re friends, and if you don’t think so then I’d like to try and be. We’re on the same team. I trust you to watch my back and I’m always going to have yours, even if you’re part space cat. So, that’s it, I guess.”

Hunk was next, and he was already shedding tears. 

“I don’t know what to say.” He blubbered, looking up at Red earnestly. “I just want to give Keith a hug and tell him everything’s going to be ok and that I won’t let anybody hurt him.”

Red seemed to like that idea, because as soon as Hunk was done talking her particle barrier flickered out and her jaw creaked open. Still, the paladins hesitated until Shiro’s voice came to them again. 

“It’s alright guys, you can come inside.”

So one by one, they filed up the ramp and into Red’s cockpit.

Shiro and Keith were there, sitting on the floor and surrounded by a multitude of blankets. Shiro looked tired and sad, hair mussed from running his hands through it, and Keith frankly looked like a raw emotional mess. But he still gave them a tiny smile when they entered the cabin (which honestly was a little small with all of them in there but none of them were thinking about it).

Immediately, Hunk asked, “Can I give you a hug?”

Everyone saw the little flicker of fear flit across Keith’s face, but he nodded affirmatively despite it, and Hunk knelt down next to his blanket nest and gently wrapped Keith up in his arms. Things are tense for a moment, until Keith relaxes, practically disappearing into the Yellow Paladin’s embrace. Around them, Red purrs. 

Shiro is the next one to join the hug, draping himself over Keith’s back and resting his cheek on the crown of his head. Pidge is next, worming her way in between the other two until she had her skinny arms firmly around Keith’s waist. Then Lance, forcing himself into the space between Keith and the wall so that he’s surrounded on all sides. They can all feel him shaking. 

“It’s alright.” Says Pidge. 

“You’re safe here.” Murmurs Shiro.

“We won’t let anybody get you.” Soothes Hunk.

“We need our reckless hothead to keep things interesting.” Teases Lance. 

“Thank you.” Keith is gasping, but it sounds disbelieving rather than desperate. 

“Thank you so much.” 

**Author's Note:**

> NO THAT WAS NOT A STRANGER THINGS REFERENCE! Subject Eleven was a Maximum Ride reference and if I see any comments stating otherwise I may scream.


End file.
